A conventional data storage system includes a set of hosts, a set of storage processor modules and an array of disk drives. During operation, the set of storage processor modules performs data storage operations on behalf of the set of hosts (e.g., stores host data into the array of disk drives, and loads host data from the array of disk drives).
Some disk drive arrays contain hundreds of replaceable disk drives (e.g., hot swappable disk drives). If a particular disk drive fails, a technician simply removes the failed disk drive from its slot, and inserts a new disk drive in its place. The set of storage processors then performs a data recovery operation to restore data, which resided on the failed disk drive, onto the new disk drive.
Similarly, other parts of the data storage system may fail and require replacement. For example, some data storage systems include two replaceable storage processor modules and replaceable network modules for fault tolerance and load balancing purposes.